LECTURE VIII.

THE RESTITUTION OF ALL THINGS.

The world is not to continue as it is. It will have its palingenesia. Times of refreshment will brighten into the times of the restitution of all that prophets have foretold.

"Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; and he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began."-ACTs iii. 19-21.

CRITICAL or, more technically called, exegetical remarks upon this passage are not at present my object or desire. But there are some thoughts suggested by it which are full of instruction or practical value which it is desirable to evolve. Repentance is renunciation of sin in principle, in sympathy, and practice: in the first instance it is a powerful passion; in its permanent shape an indomitable principle. Men are walking in the wrong direction; and they are asked to turn round, and walk precisely in the opposite. "Be converted ;"

converted from wrong preferences; from the crooked way in which you walk; from the passions you indulge; from sinful objects that dominate within. "That your sins may be blotted out;" blotted out, not in tears of repentance. All the tears that a penitent ever shed cannot expiate one sin: it is folly to imagine it, it must be disappointment to attempt it. There is only one element in the universe that can cancel the least sin, and, thank God, it can cancel the greatest-"The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth from all sin." The translation is not correctly given in the text so far as regards the word when; "That your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord." It ought to be read, "That your sins may be blotted out, and that the times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord; and that he may send Jesus Christ, whom the heaven must receive until the times of the restitution of all things; which God hath spoken by the mouth of his holy prophets." To whom was this addressed? To the Jews; the very people that crucified Christ. To them he says, Repent, and be converted, that times of refreshing may arrive. It may be asked, How can the conversion of the Jewish people bring on the times of refreshing and the restitution of all things? We ask, How can prayer do it? We pray, "Come, Lord Jesus ;" we pray, "Thy kingdom come:" our prayers and labours are connected with the sovereign purpose of God. When Israel shall look upon Him whom they have pierced-when the Jews shall recognize in the Man of Sorrows the Messiah, the only Saviour, then shall arrive those times of the refreshing, those times of restitution of all things which wait for this; and earth

shall end with a Paradise more beautiful, fragrant, and lasting, far more lasting, than that with which it began. What is meant by these times of refreshing-these times of the restitution of all things? I do not enter upon the chronological meaning of the word; I would rather take the moral significance of the times of refreshing and restitution of all things. We need strength to battle with the world as we now find it; and grace to be more than conquerors; and it is a great help, in enabling us to do so, to be assured that evil shall not have the victory; that the patches of sunshine that illuminate the desert shall one day spread into the everlasting and the universal summer; and that those successive bits that we recover from the grasp of the foe are earnests and instalments of a world recovered from the denomination of Satan, and restored to union and communion with God. Half the element of victory is the conviction that we shall obtain it.

But what are these times of refreshing? They are the burden of grand promises; they are the substance of a thousand prophecies. The word translated "refreshing," means, literally, coolness after heat, recreation by fresh air, refreshment as the earth is refreshed by the dews amidst the heat of summer; rest, peace, and quiet. Therefore times worthy of such epithets shall arise. There is need, indeed, of such times of refreshing. Sins predominate over the length of the world still; sins individual, social, and national. Of all scorching powers in the human conscience sin is the most intolerable. The apostle tells us, in his remarkable prophecy, that in the last days perilous times shall come; that men shall be lovers of their own selves; covetous, boasting, blasphemers, disobedient to

parents; unthankful, unholy. To a Christian, surely the era that ends these, and delivers us from their heat and torture, must be a time of refreshment. The great time of refreshment will be also promoted when the dark clouds that obscure the sky, the cloud of Mahometanism in the east, the cloud of the Popedom in the west, shall all be swept away; and the now intercepted beams of the Sun of Righteousness shall fall upon a world at peace with itself and at peace with God. It is impossible to over-estimate the amount of refreshment accruing from the accomplishment of the prediction that Mahometanism shall wane, that Romanism shall be destroyed, and a pure worship and holy incense shall ascend to God from all lands and all tongues. Another element of this refreshment will be the casting out of Satan. It is a very awful thought that there is a being armed with an archangel's strength, inspired by a fiend's malignity; whose whole employment, and if I may use the word, whole joy is success in seducing and destroying humankind. There is no doubt that some of those great crimes we hear of are the inspirations of him who is a liar and a murderer from the beginning. As we praise the man who does a good deed, but give the glory and the honour of it to God, we should, by parity of reasoning, condemn the man who does a wicked deed, but give the discredit and the dishonour of it to Satan. If God be the author of all good, let the subject of the good have our approbation, but let the God that inspired the good have the glory. If Satan be the inspirer of great sins, let the criminal endure the punishment, but let us not forget to give him to whom it is due a portion of the discredit and the obloquy. We read in prophecy that Satan will be bound, and cast

more.

into the bottomless pit, and will destroy nations no The removal of that one malignant force from our world will be a time of intense and glorious refreshment. We give to Satan that prominence in evil which is justly and scripturally his due. And by a great law it often occurs that those who give the Spirit of God all the glory in man's regeneration are the only persons that give the legitimate amount of discredit that is due to Satan for the great sins that stain the history and mar the happiness of mankind. It will be no ordinary amount of blessing when he who walks about seeking whom he may devour; who has, what I think is the most awful fact in Scripture, power to enter my heart without my consent, and to cast into that heart sparks of evil, and to awaken in the intellect purposes of mischief; and when he has succeeded in poisoning with sin, to awaken in the conscience the corrodings of remorse, like the very instalments of the condition and the sufferings of the damned, shall be ejected from the world. Delivered from his reach and power, and the possibility of his access to a single human heart, we shall feel that a time of refreshment has come upon the weary world. Another element of this refreshment will consist in God's Holy Spirit being given in greater abundance than ever. A time of partial refreshment is come. I noticed at the different meetings of the different religious societies in 1860, almost every one-bishops from the bench, curates from their parishes, ministers of various denominations

seemed to be impressed with the belief, with scarcely a dissentient voice, that whatever be the alloy in the gold, or the tares among the wheat, a time of refreshing has fallen upon sections of Ireland; that dews of the descending blessing have refreshed the parched cities of